Assets: Beautiful automobile with great gobs of power and the handling
to go along with it.

Debits: The price, unfortunately. The trunk could be larger.

Several manufacturers have their “skunk works” where they
develop high-performance versions of their standard road cars.
Mercedes-Benz has AMG, Cadillac has the v-versions of some of its sportier
cars, and even Chevrolet has “SS” badged versions of just about
every car it markets.

Likewise, BMW offers M versions of some of its cars. The M designation
means the car has been tuned to create a higher-performance engine, with a
sportier suspension and often a different transmission. In some cases,
there are engines available in the M cars that you can’t get in the
non-M versions of the same car.

Such is the situation with the M6 Coupe, the hotted-up version of
BMW’s stunning 6-Series Coupe. The M6 is powered by a V10 engine that
develops 500 horsepower and 383 lb.-ft. of torque, much more than the
standard car. All this comes at a price, of course, but even the
“normal” 6-Series is far from bottom-of-the-line.

I’m one of those people who thinks the BMW 6-Series is one of the
more beautiful automobiles that esteemed company has built. It, like most
coupes, has great proportions and is, to me, the epitome of what a BMW
should look like. Sure, the more prosaic 3- and 5-Series must be practical
because they are the bread-and-butter cars, but the 6 is to be loved and
adored.

With that in mind, I salivated when they handed me the keys to my own
M6. Technically, of course, it wasn’t my own. I also had to share it
with another journalist in the rolling hills north of Milwaukee, but it was
worth the sharing.

The 500 hp V10 engine purred, no matter how hard we flogged it.
Fortunately, the gendarmes weren’t in force that day, because we
pushed the big round speedometer into triple digits on roads that had half
that as a speed limit. I’ll confess I was speeding, but in a car like
the M6 that isn’t driving dangerously. The car is solid and has a
suspension designed to keep the driver and passengers safe, no matter what
kind of road is encountered.

We proved this further later in our test day when we hit the track at
Road America, one of the country’s premier road-racing facilities. My
instructor/co-driver for my “hot laps” kept complimenting me on
how smoothly I was driving and how well I was hitting the apexes of the
corners. Heck, it wasn’t me; it was the M6. It’s the kind of
car that can make anyone look like an experienced race driver.

But the M6 isn’t just about breaking speed limits or driving on a
race track. It’s a solid coupe that can take you from point A to
point B in style and comfort. While the standard 6-Series coupe or
convertible can also perform this relatively simple act with equal style
and panache, the M6 does it with the underlying feeling that, if you want
to, you can be very naughty.

The seats in the M6 are leather-faced and offer excellent side support.
Again, a good part of the reason for being able to drive on the track with
such assurance is the fact that the M6 molds to your body so well. You grip
a fat leather-covered steering wheel that keeps you in control of the car
with great ease. I loved BMW’s new progressive steering. I kept my
hands at the 10 and 2 o’clock positions for the entire ride, and
never had to shuffle them around when I came to tighter corners. On the
track, of course, with higher speeds and tighter corners there was a need
to shift my hands, but not often and not by much.

The M6 is definitely a driver’s car.

There are some unfortunate compromises with the M6, compromises that you
run into with most coupes. The trunk is tiny at 13 cubic feet. Sure,
it’s about right for a compact car, but when you’re headed out
for a trip of any length in a car like this, your wife will most certainly
want to take along all her best clothes and shoes. So a larger trunk would
be helpful. And it is simply too small for golf clubs. It’d be great
if there was room for two sets, so you could impress your partner, but
cramming one bag back there is tough.

But I’m carping. If you aren’t scared by the over-$100,000
sticker, and if you’re interested in a high-performance car that
won’t set you back by 50 percent more than that, then the M6 might be
the vehicle for you. It has a limited audience, but that audience can also
consider itself very lucky.